A healthcare SEO strategy is a marketing tactic to make your online presence more easily accessible to potential patients.
Attracting new patients is more challenging than ever in today’s fast-paced, digital world. Most patients rely on search engines to help guide them in finding new services, including healthcare providers. Patients are given a plethora of choices when researching online, which makes it easy for businesses to get buried in search results, especially in a highly competitive market like health care.
Any business will benefit from improving its SEO strategy and solidifying its online presence. Furthermore, hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare services must offer their patients a competitive and clearly defined digital experience that separates them from the crowd.
Let’s get into the basics of a healthcare SEO strategy and how you can enrich your strategy to attract more patients.
What Is Healthcare SEO?
Healthcare SEO allows your website to rank high in search engine results pages based on organic searches patients make.
About 80% of patients use search engines to answer their health-related questions, which gives healthcare businesses a significant incentive to make their online presence visible and accessible.
You want your business to be at the forefront of your patients’ research, so they can learn about and choose your business over competitors.
What Are the Benefits of Improving Your Healthcare SEO Strategy?
Healthcare companies benefit from improving their SEO in a variety of ways. Here are some of the notable benefits you’ll want to keep in mind:
- Attract New Patients: As we’ve mentioned, most patients use search engines to answer their health-related questions and discover new providers. Having a clearly defined, easily accessible, and highly visible online presence is the simplest way to attract new patients to your practice.
- Develop A Sense of Trust: Many patients rely on top search results and online reviews to determine the most trustworthy business. Having your business at the forefront of their organic search results and a website filled with easy-to-access and understandable information will aid in developing a sense of trust and encourage new patients to reach out.
- Attract Your Target Audience: Your SEO strategy should have a clearly defined target audience. For example, an eye doctor’s SEO will look different than a walk-in clinic’s. Both offer healthcare services, but having the right strategy will ensure you’re attracting patients who need your services the most. It’s also helpful to focus on local searches to establish your business’s place in the community.
- Avoid Being Out-Competed: The healthcare industry is a competitive market, and it’s very easy for a website to get buried by competitors in search engine results pages. The best way to avoid getting out-competed online is by frequently and consistently reviewing your strategy and making improvements where necessary. This will improve your business’s visibility and credibility and allow you to attract more patients.
- Improve Brand Awareness: Just like other businesses, healthcare providers and services need to have a high brand awareness to attract new patients and retain long-term clients. The right strategy will allow you to maintain your brand awareness and give your business the visibility it needs to thrive.
The Importance of EEAT
We mentioned the importance of building trust through your SEO strategy in the previous section, but for healthcare SEO, it’s crucial to focus on improving the EEAT of your site. EEAT, formerly known as EAT, stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Google judges sites based on the credibility of the page, author, and website.
Healthcare websites are considered YMYL pages, “Your Money, Your Life.” This term describes sites that could impact a person’s future happiness, health, safety, or financial security.
A few ways you can improve the EEAT of your site include:
- Having a detailed about us page that lists the credentials of your business and authors.
- Creating a quality Contact Us page that lists all relevant information, including location, business hours, and methods of contact.
- Including a privacy policy, terms and conditions, disclaimers where necessary, etc.
How to Improve the Health of Your Healthcare SEO Strategy
Improving your healthcare SEO strategy requires a few key things: patience, understanding of your target audience, and commitment.
Of course, you need a healthy knowledge of SEO best practices as well. You’ll want to remember all that while implementing these actionable steps.
Emphasize Quality Content with Relevant Keywords
An eye doctor will choose very different keywords from those chosen by a chiropractor or a children’s hospital. It’s essential that you choose relevant, high-volume keywords that your target audience will organically search for. Use these keywords to create quality, compelling content that addresses your patient’s needs and answers their questions.
Doing this will ensure your content is getting put in front of the right people, and emphasizing quality content helps to elevate your business’s credibility as an expert authority on the subject.
Make Your Site Easy To Find
Keywords are just one way that you can enhance your site’s visibility. You should also optimize your HTML tags to make it easier for people and search engine crawlers to understand what your website is about. It’s also helpful to create a sitemap, which is a list of all the URLs on your site that you want search engines to index and show to users.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure your site is easy for search engines to crawl and index.
Build Backlinks and Internal Links
Linking one post on your site to another is an excellent way to help your audience navigate your website and find information on additional concerns or services without having to leave your site. Along with internal linking, building backlinks will help improve your SEO.
Backlinking is when one business’s website links to another. Doing this helps build credibility for your site and helps enhance the trust users have in your business.
Track and Observe Your Results
You won’t know if your improved strategy works without tracking and observing your results. Use tools like Google Analytics 4 to determine where you rank for keywords, how many visitors your site receives, and how many people click on the relevant pages.
Once you know how your site performs, you’ll easily see where you need to continue improving to convert more visitors into engaged patients.
Improve User Experience
As a business, we know your goal is to provide your potential patients with the best experience possible. It’s essential to make sure your site is intuitive and easy to navigate. It’s equally important to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Most people use their phones rather than a computer or laptop to search for new services.
Use a clear and simple layout for the entirety of your site, and ensure the speed of your site is up to par.
Complete Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile will be the first source of contact between you and potential clients in most instances.
- Keep the page up to date with your current location, business hours, and contact information.
- Focus on using this as an opportunity to put your best foot forward by responding to all customer reviews, both positive and negative, in a tactful and helpful manner.
- Identify key points in customer reviews that you can use for content on your website.
If customers ask the same questions or mention the same things in their reviews, taking these points and creating an FAQ on your site can be helpful.
Link to Your Social Media Profiles
In this age, businesses are expected to have a presence on major social media sites.
Link to your social media pages on your website to allow your potential patients to learn more about you and your business. This can be an excellent opportunity to show your authoritativeness by answering questions on your social media pages. It also helps develop your trustworthiness by showing your business as kind, competent, and connected.
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